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Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU) Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU) Research Report 4 Has Democracy Reduced Terrorism in Pakistan? Raja M. Ali Saleem 11 August 2013 About the Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU) The Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU) was established in March 2007 and relocated to Durham University on 1st April 2013. It serves as an independent portal and neutral platform for interdisciplinary research on all aspects of Pakistani security, dealing with Pakistan's impact on regional and global security, internal security issues within Pakistan, and the interplay of the two. PSRU provides information about, and critical analysis of, Pakistani security with particular emphasis on extremism/terrorism, nuclear weapons issues, and the internal stability and cohesion of the state. PSRU is intended as a resource for anyone interested in the security of Pakistan and provides: Briefing papers; Reports; Datasets; Consultancy; Academic, institutional and media links; An open space for those working for positive change in Pakistan and for those currently without a voice. PSRU welcomes collaboration from individuals, groups and organisations, which share our broad objectives. Please contact us at [email protected] We encourage you to look at the website available through: www.durham.ac.uk/psru/ Other PSRU Publications The following papers are freely available through the Pakistan Security Research Unit (PSRU): Report Number 3. Terrorism and the Macro-economy: Evidence from Pakistan. Report Number 2. Civilian Control and Democratic Transition: Pakistan’s Unequal Equation. Report Number 1. The Jihadi Terrain in Pakistan: An Introduction to the Sunni Jihadi Groups in Pakistan and Kashmir Briefings Numbers 1-67 including: Brief Number 59. An Analysis of Obama’s Af-Pak Goal and First Objective: Setting the Baseline and Prospects for Success Brief Number 60. Domestic Politics and Systemic Constraints in Pakistan’s India Policy Brief Number 61. The Limited Military Utility of Pakistan’s Battlefield Use of Nuclear Weapons in Response to Large Scale Indian Conventional Attack Brief Number 62. Getting Afghanistan Right Brief Number 63. Why Karachi is a Major Source of Instability in Pakistan? Brief Number 66. The Siachen Glacier and Independent Arbitration Brief Number 67. Illiberal Democrats and the Marginalisation of Religious Minorities in Pakistan All these papers are freely available from: www.durham.ac.uk/psru 2 About the author Raja Saleem is a PhD student at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University. He has degrees from Quaid-i-Azam University (Islamabad, Pakistan), University of Manchester (UK) and University of Calgary (Canada). He has previously worked as a civil servant in Pakistan and as a consultant to international organizations like Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program. His main research interests are democratization, political Islam and the military’s role in politics. Abstract The return of democracy in 2008 raised hopes that terrorism would be defeated in Pakistan. Five years on, with a new popular government in the saddle, it’s important to take stock and examine the effects of democratic rule on terrorism in Pakistan. The main argument of this paper is that the effects of democracy on terrorism cannot be ascertained before identifying which type of democracy and terrorism one is dealing with. After identifying the type of Pakistani democracy and the two main types of terrorism prevalent in Pakistan, data related to terrorism during the tenure of democratic government (2008-13) is analyzed. The data show that religious terrorism decreased significantly during the last five years but Baloch nationalist terrorism generally maintained its course. These different outcomes are then linked to the nature of Pakistani democracy, where the military only conditionally submits to the elected civilian leaders. Pakistan’s military plays a crucial role in dealing with both religious and nationalist terrorists and thus the effects of democracy in Pakistan on terrorism depend paradoxically on the military’s role. If the military supports government’s anti-terrorism policies, those policies have a good chance of being successful. If it does not, anti-terrorism policies will fail. Keywords: Pakistan, democracy, terrorism, military, TTP, Baloch, nationalism. 3 Introduction The relationship between democracy and terrorism is complex. In his State of the Union address in 2006, President George W. Bush argued, ‘Dictatorships shelter terrorists, and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight against terror. Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer, and so we will act boldly in freedom's cause’ (Washington Post 2006). President (then Senator) Obama agreed that bringing freedoms Americans enjoy and others aspire to, to other countries and building strong democratic states will help reduce terrorism (Obama 2007). More recently, Secretary of State Clinton made the following statement about Arab Spring. ‘Democracies make for stronger and stabler partners. They trade more, innovate more, and fight less. They help divided societies to air and hopefully resolve their differences…. Our choices also reflect other interests in the region with a real impact on Americans’ lives— including our fight against al-Qaida, defense of our allies, and a secure supply of energy. Over time, a more democratic Middle East and North Africa can provide a more sustainable basis for addressing all three of those challenges’. (Department of State 2011) As more countries fight terrorism and try to become advanced democracies simultaneously, the debate about democracy and terrorism is increasing in relevance. Can more democracy lead to less terrorism in these countries as argued by many of its liberal promoters or will more democracy and openness lead to more conflict and uncertainty as argued by others (Benari and Kempinski 2012)? This paper analyzes the effects of democracy on terrorism in Pakistan during the tenure of the first democratic government after transition from authoritarian rule (2008-13). Democracy and Terrorism One way of looking at the effects of democracy on terrorism is to collect data about a number of democracies suffering from terrorism and perform quantitative analysis. This path has been chosen by many scholars1. However, such quantitative analyses conceal how different each of these countries is from others. The different types of both democracy and terrorism (and the diverse factors affecting these two variables) not only across but also within countries, make it difficult to do justice to all the relevant data and provide a rigorous analysis. This paper, 1 Some of these studies will be discussed later in the paper. 4 therefore, uses case-study methodology to present a more focused and in-depth analysis of the effects of democracy on terrorism in one country i.e. Pakistan. Pakistan has been chosen to be the case-study for studying the effects of democracy on terrorism for two reasons. First, it is a country where unfortunately terrorism has more than a sporadic presence. During the last few years, it has consistently ranked among the top three countries in the world in terms of terrorism-linked fatalities. Second, Pakistan allows the before-after comparison as it suffered from large scale terrorism many years under military rule before it transitioned to democracy. The completion of five years provides a natural opportunity to pause and reflect on the effects of democracy on terrorism in Pakistan. Table 1: Deaths in Terrorist Attacks Country 2008 2009 2010 2011 Iraq 5016 3654 3364 3063 Afghanistan 1989 2778 3202 3353 Pakistan 2293 2670 2150 2033 Somalia 1278 1441 1353 1011 India 1113 663 809 479 Source: National Counter-Terrorism Center 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 Reports on Terrorism This paper has five parts. The first part will discuss definitional issues related to democracy and terrorism. The next part will give a review of the research linking democracy and terrorism. Part three will explain the types of democracy and terrorism in Pakistan. The last two parts will present data and analyze the effects of democracy on two different types of terrorism (religious-Islamist and nationalist-Baloch) in Pakistan. I Defining Democracy The twentieth century was called the century of democracy. At the start of the last century, there were only eight democracies but when it ended, there were more than a hundred democracies in the world. Democracy has not only become the default option of the elites (as monarchy once was), but also of the populace. The vast majority of people, even in non- democratic states, choose democracy as their favorite system of government. The major threat to democracy is now not from the rival systems of government, but from the defective democratic systems (Diamond 1996). 5 Unfortunately, there is no consensus on how to define democracy. One of the most prominent scholars of democracy Seymour Martin Lipset said, ‘There are almost as many theoretical definitions of democracy as there are scholars who study democratic politics’ (Lipset and Lakin 2004). A key division among democracy scholars is between those who advocate ‘thin’, procedural or minimalist definitions and others who prefer ‘thick’, normative or maximalist definitions of democracy. Thin definitions have few requirements and emphasize the procedural aspects,
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